FirstCheck Africa is an early-stage venture capital firm that provides funding to female-led startups in Africa.

FirstCheck Africa

FirstCheck Africa is an early believer for a generation of African women in tech. We invest early, with high conviction, in high-growth female-led startups with category-leadership potential with check sizes of up to $250K.

FirstCheck Africa is excited to be a pioneering fund on the continent that's dedicated to the emergence of more and more ambitious, exceptional women among Africa's next generation of entrepreneurial leaders.

We're proud to be a Diversity Sponsor for today's release by Disrupt Africa: "Diversity Dividend: Exploring Gender Equality in the African Tech Ecosystem". 

With this report, Tom Jackson and Gabriella Mulligan have put hard facts around a topic that we spend a lot of time thinking about: representation in Africa's early-stage ecosystem. Their extensive report, which features key data and interviews with female founders and investors active on the continent, will be updated every two years, and we look forward to following the African tech ecosystem's progress.

Well done to the team at Disrupt Africa! 🎉

FirstCheck Africa is, at its core, a pre-seed fund. Pre-seed startups may be pre- or post-launch and pre- or post-revenues. 

If your startup is already generating revenues, it’s had a product in the market for a short time. We will consider investments as early as the idea stage at the pre-seed stage. But, we are unlikely to invest off the back of a proverbial napkin. We like to see a team of committed founders encouraging feedback from initial market development, a product mock-up or a functional prototype. We’re excited by founders who have unique insights about the problem they're solving and understand their market opportunities and target customers. 

We also sometimes invest at the seed stage. At the seed stage, we’re looking for a launched product that customers love, strong revenue growth, users and other traction indicators, signs of product-market fit, attractive unit economics, and a founding team gearing up to scale. We anticipate $10,000 or more in monthly revenues. 

Pre-seed or seed, the most critical factor in our decision-making is the founder or co-founding team. We look for data-driven founders who combine domain expertise with passion, tenacity and resourcefulness. Your role as a founder is crucial, and we value your unique contributions to the startup. 

All of the above and at least one female founder on the cofounding team.

In this conversation, Eloho Omame and Odunayo Eweniyi discuss striking a balance between aiming for representation and targeting the same investment returns that the average early-stage fund seeks.

This International Women's Day 2024, FirstCheck Africa is excited to launch a new series of conversations aimed at audacious women building tech startups in Africa. Featuring our co-founders, Eloho Omame and Odunayo Eweniyi, and sometimes, founder and investor guests, we’ll speak about how we invest, think about building startups, founder-investor relationships, tech in Africa and everything in between. We’ll always be open, and we’ll always have fun!

In 2021, Africa needed a VC fund that measured its success by actually deploying capital into early-stage female-led companies rather than turning female founders into a vanity metric, so FirstCheck Africa was born. We launched with a commitment to investing in the most dynamic, audacious and ambitious women who are building technology ventures on the continent. Twelve portfolio companies in four countries later, we continue to invest! 

FirstCheck Africa is excited to be the earliest believer for some of the continent’s most ambitious women who are building the next generation of category-defining companies. We’re determined to level the playing field and help them emerge in a cohort of Africa’s most inspiring company builders and role models.  

Our mission is driven not only by an imperative to see more women who look like Eloho and Odun around the table in African tech, but also by a strong conviction in the business case for investing in women; dollar-for-dollar, female-led companies deliver better investment returns, period! We’re excited to build a portfolio of companies that can deliver on that return potential while disproving every single myth and misconception that exists for Africa’s female founders today. 

In this first episode, Eloho and Odun talk about the funny story of how FirstCheck Africa got started and what drives us to build an investment thesis dedicated exclusively to female-led startups.

Our co-founder/partner Eloho Omame does too many things! Apparently one of them is co-host podcasts with great content producers like Justin Norman and The Flip. Exciting to see Uncover, one of our portfolio companies featured on Episode 1: "Why is only 2% of funding going to female founders?"

FirstCheck Africa loved Sneha Mehta, CFA and Jade Oyateru, MBA, Uncover's co-founders instant we met them a couple of years ago, and they challenged our young fund's thesis on how we think about the digital opportunity for female-led/female-focused companies in Africa.

We're proud to say that we invested, the company is doing well, and they're proving that you can build a digital-first innovative skincare business serving African consumers! ❤️ 

Listen now: https://lnkd.in/d88aTE-P

We're celebrating our first day back at work in 2024 with an announcement from our newest portfolio company, Cleva Banking (YC W24)! Tolu Alabi and Philip Adama Abel are building a banking platform to power Africa's gig economy and our continent's growing number of professional nomads. We're excited to have been part of the company's $1.5M pre-seed round. 

If you're an ambitious founder building an exciting, high-growth, female-led company, FirstCheck Africa is open for business! Happy New Year!!! 🥂 

Eloho Omame Odunayo Eweniyi

https://lnkd.in/dpaRHqmG

We’re super proud to see FirstCheck Africa’s two co-founders, Eloho Omame and Odunayo Eweniyi featured in Peace Itimi’s inspired documentary about the tech ecosystem in Nigeria and Africa. 😎

Well done Peace Itimi and the amazing production team behind Innovating Africa: The Rise of Tech in Nigeria. 🇳🇬🌍🚀

We can’t wait to watch!

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