Episode 142 - Pursuing Righteous Capital with Kola Aina
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As both an entrepreneur and an investor, Kola Aina has a unique perspective on Africa’s market. These days he spends most of his time building and investing in ecosystems that help communities flourish. He joins Henry and Ndidi to talk about the makings of a good deal and to inspire listeners with a vision for righteous capital.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Jacktone: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast. We are committed to spotlighting the voices of entrepreneurs and innovators shaping the marketplace in our countries across this vast continent. This week we're featuring Kola Aina. Kola is the founding partner at Ventures platform and early stage discovery venture capital funding championing the next generation of African entrepreneurs. He's a leading executive and board director who combines a powerful mix of entrepreneurial investment and technical experience across diverse industries, including technology, finance, media, agriculture, infrastructure and real estate. As a venture capitalist, Kola identifies and invests in early stage technology companies focused on the disruption of financial services, healthcare, education, agriculture and enterprise software. He has built a strong investment portfolio of best in class high growth companies. We are excited to talk to Kola about the makings of a good deal and how good work contributes to more flourishing communities.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast. We are in the early days here and I'm with as always with my co host Ndidi, Ndidi. Good morning. Even though it's not morning.
Ndidi Nwuneli: Good afternoon. Good evening.
Henry Kaestner: Exactly. Ndidi, when we talk last, you and Reuben, who joined us on our first podcast, it encouraged me to listen to some more African music. And we had talked about so many folks in the United States, in the West think of getting involved in Africa through the lens of Bob Geldof and U2. And the challenge was, for me, the upserper on this podcast that's coming from the West, but has a great passion and great love for Africa to be able to be brought up to speed more of my music. And so I listened to Burna Boy, and I think I need to keep on listening because it's not exactly my type of music, but I need to get broadened out beyond, I guess, Lady Black and Bozo and Shot. A I know that there are lots of things that I and so much of our audience need to learn about African music. But this is also a good time to mention the fact that this podcast is primarily while we expect that a lot of folks will come over from our Faith Driven Entrepreneur, our Podcasts and our Faith Driven Investor podcast, which are, to be clear, global listen to in 130 countries, it does kind of skew to the West. So we anticipate that some folks from our audience that are interested in Africa will come over, but it's primarily for African entrepreneurs, so they might see what God is doing in the marketplace, be encouraged by their brothers and sisters in Africa. And there's no better way to do that, no better leader to lead us through that than you Ndidi, Ndidi, thank you very much for being with us again.
Ndidi Nwuneli: My pleasure, Henry. And thank you for this wonderful opportunity.
Henry Kaestner: We've got a great guest today. We've got a guy that really embodies so much of the spirit of what God has done through this movement that we have Faith Driven Entrepreneur Faith Driven Investor. And for those of you who are coming in new into the family, Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor are these decentralized movements that involve lots of great organizations and ministries from around the world. We have, I don't know, maybe a dozen or so great ministries just in Africa alone that have all coalesced around this concept in the spirit of a shared cultural DNA of Christian business owners and entrepreneurs around the world, which include things like the identity in Christ, our call to create and daring to be faithful versus willful, etc. But we've got a great opportunity to be able to shed light on what's going on in the continent through a person who is an entrepreneur and an investor. And so, Kola, welcome to the program.
Kola Aina: Thank you for having me. Henry Delighted to be here and to share and learn, but really just happy to get the chat going and share some of what God is doing on this end.
Henry Kaestner: Excellent. Ndidi is going to lead us through a lot of that. But before we get started, one of the things we like to do with all of our guests is get a biographical flyover. Who are you? Where do you come from? How has faith been brought into your life with time? And then we'll get into meet of that. But give us a flyover, please.
Kola Aina: Yeah, sure. Kola is my name, Nigerian citizen. I was born in Lagos, but my family very quickly, like most like lots of families, moved to the northern part of Nigeria, precisely Kano in the first instance and then Kaduna. My father worked serving as a corporate salesman and then very quickly became a bottling entrepreneur. I like to say I grew up in a start up family because I would watch my dad go from business to business, and at some point he would have three different enterprises run at the same time. And so my life as a kid was between so watching my parents start businesses and turning in those businesses and going to church. It was very much a regulated upbringing that I went through. Very quickly because I'm the first of five kids, my dad ensured I got really involved in family business. I went to boarding school and my mom will always tell me, remember the son of whom you are, you know? And if you know anything about the you're about culture, you know, there's a huge responsibility on the first child to not sully the family name. Hmm. Very quickly as well. I grew up, you know, one of my dad's most repeated sayings is a phrase I like very much. And it goes like this My father, God takes care of me in grand style. And, you know, because he was swinging so far out, taking so much risk both in businesses and extremely leveraged himself, he would always sort of declare this extreme levels of faith in God and what God was doing, you know, in his new businesses, that very quickly, I begun to see a direct correlation between my faith and the work that I did. And so that was sort of my upbringing. You know, growing up in Kaduna I went up to engineering school in the U.S. I went to business school, walked in, you know, corporate. But I always had this nagging desire to come back to Nigeria to be a part of, you know, how my country got better. And in 2009, I finally made that bold move, move back to Nigeria. I met my wife shortly after I got married. And as I say, the rest is history while I was in school certainly got carried away at some point as well as most young men do. But, you know, God bless my mother. She had put in so much work and instilling the fear of God in us as kids that even when we sort of, you know, got carried away, we always had a center. Right. And my mom would send us devotionals all the way from Kaduna to wherever we were in the world. You know, I definitely invested a great deal in my Christian journey once I gave my life to Christ in my teens. And so I'll pause there. Happy to sort of continue the conversation all the way to where I am today.
Henry Kaestner: I think that'd be great. Yeah. So the question on my mind and I'm trying to place your accent, did you go to school in the States?
Kola Aina: I did, yes. I went to school in a small town called Savannah, Georgia.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah.
Kola Aina: And that's because, you know, my my mom and I were plotting how I would go to school in the U.S. and my dad didn't know about it. I got admitted, got a scholarship to study graphic design at a school in Savannah, a leading design school. And my dad, my dad kicked against that and said, no way. My son went to study design. And so I ended up it had to be in Savannah because we had family in Savannah, Georgia. And so I ended up at Savannah State University in Savannah, where I went for engineering school and moved out west to Bowling Green State, Ohio for my master's. And yeah, my accent is a mix of different twangs. Very, very nice.
Henry Kaestner: Do you say y'all. Can you do that?
Kola Aina: I do. I do. I I'm quite the Southern boy, you know.
Henry Kaestner: That's great. Okay, so you're back to Nigeria and you said 2009.
Kola Aina: Yes.
Henry Kaestner: And then you started your own career. Give us flyover of your career and what you've done professionally till now.
Kola Aina: Yeah. So, no, I didn't quite start my career right off the back. My first move back to Nigeria was my dad had asked me to he was looking to retire and in a move back to help run the family business, you know, until we worked together for a year and a half. But, you know, I had invested quite a bit of time in trying to understand the purpose of my life and what I was for. And, you know, I was one of those obsessive, purpose driven Life readers. The book by Rick Warren. Yeah. You know, the time I probably read it like five times. You know, I'd read the journal, I read all the versions of the book, you know, and I'd come to a clear realization what the purpose of my life was at the time I called it the way I coined it was the purpose of my life is to build platforms to enable other people. You know, it was pretty crystal clear. You know, most people are not that fortunate to have that level of clarity. I'm grateful to God for that insight that I had. And so I spent a year and a half working in my family. Business was a large publishing concern, but I always felt this hollow in my heart, you know? And I wasn't doing what I really wanted to do. And so I left the family business a year and a half. And that's always a difficult thing to do. As you can imagine, leaving the family business been the first born child and I initially relocated back to the U.S. when my family had a really rough patch, you know, a bit of a dry spell trying to figure out what next. And was in that time actually at a church program? At a church event? In DC that I met my co-founder. A gentleman by the name Chuka Esei Nigerian American. And we decided we were going to start a technology business that would build open source software for midsize businesses and, you know, development agencies and governments in Africa. At the time, you either were dealing with, you know, the large the Microsoft Oracles of this world or you were dealing with some random, small or random guy, you know, with a backpack to build your technology. And that had low risk with it. And so, you know, we decided we'll start this open source technology company. He wasn't going to move back. I decided to move back to Nigeria, started the company called Emerging Platforms and back to my idea of building platforms. And we had a really basic idea. We were going to build a platform to enable people and ideas emerge. It sounds kind of silly now thinking about it, you know, and came back.
Henry Kaestner: What sounds silly about it?
Henry Kaestner: It sounds awesome.
Kola Aina: Well, yeah. I mean, the logo as well had a line in the middle emerging was on top and platforms was beneath. I mean it was quite literal until we came back and you know, we started looking at different sectors. The education sector was one sector we focused on. And for instance, in education, we would walk to universities to take their courses online, enable them collect payments, ease the process for students to apply and get admitted. This was all manual, right before the time we started doing this. And, you know, God blessed our efforts. It was really tough. We didn't have any funding. I couldn't go back to my family for funding because I had been a a bit of a rebel, but I was convinced this was what God wanted me to do. I was convinced I was pursuing the purpose of my life. My mom was sort of in alignment. My dad eventually came around and, you know, it was a really slow process. I mean, fast forward today, it's so easy to raise venture capital. At the time we started, there was no venture capital for the kind of business I was running. I was a software business right in Nigeria until was essentially funded the business off of customers, which is the way businesses traditionally are built, one customer after the other. And then in 2013, I really started getting curious about the role technology could play in making Nigeria a better country, you know, and a much more prosperous country. And that led me to start sort of angel investing in other sectors I was interested in, but didn't feel I could personally pursue ideas in. And that, you know, very quickly, my angel portfolio grew to, you know, initially about 15 companies or so. And then I felt I needed a proper structure to manage those companies. And that really was what inspired venture platform being formed in 2016. Today we are one of the most prolific early stage funds in the region. We play a discovery role. Essentially, we're discovery fund. We identify high potential companies early that we believe can be transformational. And I can talk a little bit more about thesis down the road, but we backed them early on. We help them scale. And this is with a Pan-African mandate with the goal that these entrepreneurs would, one, create new markets that ultimately allows the vast majority of Africans who are generally low income access the goods and services they need. By so doing, we can start to increase prosperity on the continent. But more importantly, when those founders themselves exit and make a success of their businesses, we start to unlock what I like to call righteous capital, right capital that is disconnected from the legacy wealth in Nigeria and in Africa. That really starts to impact the kind of change we need. Until I can impact that as a whole. But that's the ultimate goal for why we invest and why invest now.
Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that Kola, really inspiring and I love how you've evolved through your story and one experience has built on the next that's very inspiring. You know, when you talk about Nigeria, you made a bet on Nigeria, you made a bet on Africa. Your co-founder didn't want to come back, but you did. What excites you about Africa? Why do you see what others don't see and what opportunities have you seen that have kept you motivated and going?
Kola Aina: I think at the time in the early 2000, you know, when I moved back, what excited me was more the possibility what was yet undone. Right. You know, using my family business as an example, my family had this large printing business. And if you wanted to print anything, you. You would have to travel all the way to the press in Kaduna physically. But in the US we had the Kinko's stores everywhere. And you come in, we could drive and you could produce it, you know? And I would tell my dad, I, look, I think the future of printing is going to be real time. Like literally everyone will print all over the, you know, and so being in the US gave me an opportunity and because I kept in touch with Africa, I was very much aware of the gaps that existed and I had a burning desire to try to bridge some of those gaps. And you can say that perspective was based off of my youth and sort of my desire to create nicer things on the continent. Today, it's a more urgent mission. You know, Africa has one of the fastest growing populations, a largely youthful population and, you know, the largest concentration of poverty in the world. And ultimately, we have to create prosperity at scale, you know, because that's how you solve for insecurity. That's how you solve for terrorism. It's all connected. And so for me, I see a real opportunity to utilize innovation and capital to create new markets that enable more people, gain access to the goods and services they need. You know, and when people have access, they gain agency, right? They become citizens that have agency and then they start to hold governments accountable, right? And then they become more empowered. And so this is as much as it's, you know, venture capital strategy, the ultimate goal is to empower people and really build prosperity on the continent.
Ndidi Nwuneli: That's really excellent. You know, when you think about catalytic capital and I love the term righteous capital, we would love to unpack that some more. But you mentioned innovation. You know, and innovation is critical in landscapes where there are still evolving sectors and growth sectors. So when you think about innovation, what does it mean to you and how have you built that culture within your own company and the companies you've invested in?
Kola Aina: Yeah, I think the topic of innovation is a super interesting one and it took us a while to, like I said in the early days, I was very excited about the shiny things that you find in the West at the time you couldn't quite find in Nigeria or in Africa. I mean, I was shocked you to know that until 2016, when we invested in Paystack and Paystack launched a payment company, it was really hard to set up online payments for any business. But today our thinking around innovation has evolved to where we are interested in a particular kind of innovation. You know, it's described as a market creating innovation, right? Because that kind of innovation essentially creates a new market that is more accessible. So it's really not about enhancing the products. For instance, every time a new version of Henry's mic that's recording this podcast gets released or like an iPhone, you know, you get millions of people buying it. While the majority of the folks here on the continent don't need a new iPhone, they just need a phone right to communicate on to find out the price of wheat in the market. And so for us, it's really about investing in the kinds of innovation that allow the vast majority of people on the continent gain access to healthcare, to education, to, you know, to housing. And that's why we are very specific thesis is very specific about the kinds of innovations that we like to support. And another way to put it is we are looking to back painkillers and not vitamins. And we think by backing those types of companies, we can not only make an impact here on the continent, but also create the outcomes around righteous capital that we talked about early.
Ndidi Nwuneli: At least I love that you're addressing painkillers and vitamins I would like to dig into that a bit more because there's a lot of temptation in the sector that you're in VC to back those vitamins and the shiny new things. And, you know, Paystack has been extremely successful. Right. So how do you stick to that frame and stay grounded and rooted in your vision?
Kola Aina: Well, again, I guess it's ultimately why I started, right. And for me, I consider the work I do in college, you know, because I could do this. I often tell there's so many simpler ways to earn a living. Venture is actually really hard, you know? But it is a way that I feel a sense of responsibility. You know, and I like to think about careers as spheres of influence. I feel like God's kingdom needs to be viewed as different spheres. And we get put in those spheres to dominate and to influence. And so my role and our role as Ventures platform is to do venture in a kind of way and venture that produces a kind of outcome.
Henry Kaestner: But you hit on something there that's worth just just looking in a little bit more. You don't hear that a lot from Christ followers talking about domination. You know, you're getting something that's very much from Genesis. It's the creation mandate as to take dominion over all things and to claim it in the name of God and do it for the advancement of his kingdom, for his power under his for his glory. But when you talk about the creative process in innovation and maybe this is part of your design base, but lean into it a little bit more because we don't hear that much. What do you mean about dominate? I like that.
Kola Aina: Yeah, I think as Christians, we are meant to dominate our sphere of influence as long as we're dominating for the right reasons. Right. You know, my role is to try to establish the kingdom of God through the work that I do right here on Earth by dominating for the right reasons. Not necessarily. I mean, how much can I possibly need? how much do I possibly need. Right. But we have to minister to people through like when a jobless, young Nigerian is finally able to launch her online store because of paystack or flutterwave. That is impact right on. You know, I think as we spread the gospel, as we inspire people to give their lives to Christ, we also have to sort of reduce poverty and then show people, you know, can live a decent, modest life. And so that's the way I view dominating, and connecting that to sort of genesis, which was an expressed sort of desire of God. Where I struggle with it is when the domination is for the wrong reasons, for personal gain and whatnot. And so and I learned that early because, growing up my dad had this library was full of books, autobiographies and lots of Christian books. And I remember once picking a book from his library called the Bible MBA, you know, and I quickly realized that there's the way the world does business and that's the way we do business. Right. And, you know, I think it sort of permeates the company culture, the policies and sort of how we operate in the market. So, for instance, when we launched our fund, we were very keen on being transparent and giving a fair deal because we felt, yeah, we may not necessarily insist that we would only fund Christians, right? But if our terms are fair and transparent and we don't try to invest with any funny terms and play any games, that's one way to let our light shine, right? And people get closer to us and they want to know who we are, why we believe, what we believe. That's one way that we minister and the work that we do.
Henry Kaestner: I think that's beautiful. I want to come back into the concept of righteous capital and building and taking dominion over all things for the support of building about an ecosystem that points to God. And I get a sense that you do some of that with the foundation that you have. Can you talk to us about the foundation? You don't see a lot of foundations associated with relatively new venture capital funds. You see it maybe with Andreessen Horowitz or Bessemer or U.S.V.P or Battery, you know, when they've got billions and billions of dollars under management. But I get a sense that you have this philanthropic mindset in investing back into the ecosystem, and that was around since the beginning. Talk to us about that.
Kola Aina: Yeah. That's great. Yeah, it's counter-intuitive, right? I mean, who stocks foundation for a fund off of the first fund where you barely have any fees. But again, we came to this, our first few investments were all proprietary capital, right? So it was I had the technology business that had done really well and we decided we carved out a part of capital to invest. And very quickly we realized that there was so much ecosystem development that needed to be done if we would invest successfully in companies. You know, 2016, where we started, you would struggle to find high quality deal flow as we now have. And so in the early days, the mandate of our foundation was to invest in entrepreneurs that were not yet investment ready. Right? How could we help them sort of scale up their ideas? And in parts of the country, not Lagos, you know, for instance, I grew up in Kaduna, so I always had a heart for that. I've always had a heart for that part of the country, which, as you may know, is northern and mostly Muslim. Right. And again, this is part of letting our light shine. And so we set up there and we were doing campus outreach, helping campus students with their ideas, you know, teaching them how to start a startup and whatnot. Today, the ecosystem has changed significantly, and obviously we started funding the foundation off of our very meager fees. And I initially did a grant to the foundation to a set of grants very quickly. We had all the partners sort of chip in to support the work the foundation was doing. And today that work has come upstream as the market has matured. So most recently we've been working the foundation has been playing a lead role in getting a parliament passed called the Nigeria Startup Bill, which is an act of parliament that is meant to support the startup ecosystem and protect companies and galvanize a set of incentives for the ecosystem. And so it's been an incredible journey, really working to build pipeline and create an enabling environment so that we can actually fund companies and the companies can go on to be very successful.
Henry Kaestner: I'd love for you to walk us through some of the stories that you've invested in and what is it that they make? I mean, I think about Paystack and Flutterwave. I mean, these are become very, very successful unicorns. I mean, I think in the case of Flutterwave, maybe even $1,000,000,000 valuation, 1,000,000,000 USD valuation. So achieving great scale. Talk to us about some of the companies that you invest in, what they do. And then also, what does it look like in the personal relationships that you have with some of these founders?
Kola Aina: Oh, yes. I mean, I'll tell the Paystack story. For instance, you know, when I met Shola, the founder of Paystack, I had been dealing with the issue of just not being able to turn on payments on any website or any platforms we built. We will build for customers in my enterprise business. And here was this young guy who said he had built this outlet that you can set up an online payment checkout system in less than 30 minutes. And you could be live, you know, It sounded incredible, right? Because it just seemed impossible to do it locally in Nigeria at the time. And this was just as recent as 2016. It's incredible, you know, so we invested early today. Paystack supports over 100,000 merchants. And these merchants range from, you know, the college graduate who's not been able to get a job and decides to start making crafts and selling them online all the way to airlines. That process hundreds of thousands of tickets every month and really proud to say six years after making that investment, Shola is now an investor in our new fund, so it feels like full circle. And you know, when I talk about righteous capital, righteous capital as well can be deployed in the various spheres of society until paystack were sold to Stripe in 2020. And, you know, Shola had a nice exit. We did an exit on that one as well. And now he's investing in community soccer. He set up a football team in Lagos in Surulere and identifying talent in the community. Surulere is, I guess could be considered mainland Lagos, probably not the best part of Lagos. Right. And, you know, they have players and they're going to scout this place and help them build their careers internationally. And that, in my mind, is how you build a better country, right, in sports in in the church, in government. And I think that's only possible when you start to unlock new sources of philanthropic and investment capital, which is why my definition of righteous capital is quite broad, ultimately, is capital that is not tether to legacy to the. Legacy that has cost Nigeria to underperform. And that is really interesting in building a better country and a better future in different sphere of influence. So Shola is a great story, and it's one that I consider have come full circle. Another great example I like to give is a company called Reliance HMO. It's one of the fastest growing health insurance providers in Nigeria. They're digital insurance. We invested in the company in 2017. At the time, you know, they went to Y Combinator and they do a pitch in the telemedicine app. That product really struggled to scale. But I was super impressed with the resilience of the founders. They did the pivots and identified that the traditional insurance companies in the region were run very manual systems, and so they really couldn't price their products as effectively as they should. Well, if you use technology, you could price the risk a little better. You could serve your customers a lot better. And today, they recently just closed a series B, led by General Atlantic Company, scaling really fast. And I'm super proud of what the founders have built. And so, you know, we've backed companies and fintech and Healthtech and Agtech across various verticals. And the majority of the stories of 0 to 1 where we meet the founders at the earliest stages of their development. Before now, we would just write one check and support them in every way we can. You know, as they scale and help them raise full on capital. But in December of last year, we closed on the fund and we're super excited to be able to be a long term capital partner to these entrepreneurs, to not only invest at the Pre-Seed stage, but to follow on investment at Seed and Series A and hope that we can influence the founders both professionally and personally as well.
Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that and well done. Those are great stories and the righteous capital theme, you know, good money from great sources following good projects that also results in good money coming back into the communities. I just it's really phenomenal. And, you know, you are building on this issue of how you follow these founders and how you coach and mentor them. How does your faith show up in these relationships? Are you actively discipling young men and women who are looking for meaning and purpose? I don't know if Shola is a Christian, but I'm just curious with those examples and others, how does your faith show up?
Kola Aina: Great question. I mean, I think, first of all, you know, like minds sometimes flock together. And so, of course, your team, we have members who are, you know, lovers of Christ. And I think over the years, some of my team members, my partner, for instance, has been on the team since 2016. What you see is that our faith sort of shines through our strategy, our policies and our culture. And that for us is probably one of the first pieces. I mean, you see folks sometimes who profess to be Christians and children of God and, you know, you look at their businesses and it's a contrast. Right. And so we think the way we treat our employees, the way we treat our investees, the way we engage in partnerships itself is a reflection of our faith. Right. And when people interact with us, they should actually wonder, what is it about this guy or this people that's so different? So that's one. Secondly, yes, I very much play a mentorship role where lots of the founders entrepreneurship is hard stuff, and so you often find people burning out wondering if they're doing the right thing, you know? And that often presents a great opportunity to sort of minister to these founders, because there's no other moment when a founder is open then at that point. And so I guess first off, we want to ensure that how we deal and how we interact reflects God's grace and God's love. But then also we take our mentorship responsibility very seriously.
Ndidi Nwuneli: Terrific. And I wanted to push on this issue a bits around, you know, great success stories. Have you had some failures? And how did you deal with those from a place of faith and a place of grace?
Kola Aina: Great point. Really proud to say we have two founders in our portfolio whose companies failed and we back together. And that for me is somewhat reflective of how Christ, you know, we stumble as long as we, you know, we confess our sins and we ask forgiveness. God is gracious and kind to always forgive us. Right. And so in these cases, for instance, it was obvious to us that the founders gave it their all the companies failed, not because they didn't try enough. I think it speaks to the kind of company that we invest in we are back in people. Right. We're ultimately trying to make a judgment on the quality of the human being. You know, in some cases, you know, founders have conflict or the time is too early. But we would always back the right founder again and again. And I think we've had you know, we've had a few cases where companies have just haven't worked out. Like I said, two cases where we've backed the founders again.
Ndidi Nwuneli: That's phenomenal. I have to say, this is the first time I'm hearing that you back people who fail. Usually we try to run as far away from them as possible. So you are walking reflection of Christ, my brother. Well done. And one last question for me before I pass it back to Henry. You know, as we look at our landscape, it's a difficult time, right? It's a difficult time in Nigeria's history. It's a difficult time to stay optimistic and excited. We're losing quite a few strong, talented people being poached all over the world in your sector. What keeps you excited and grounded and how do you keep your founders motivated? Thinking about the future?
Kola Aina: Yeah, that's a tough one, right? Because particularly today, you know, I'm not sure if this is unscripted, but there's a power crisis in Nigeria partly connected to what's happening in Ukraine. And I mean, we had a meeting today and some of my folks are working remote, some are working in the office. And there's no power. There's no power, there's no diesel. It's really frustrating. Right. And so we decided to buy new power packs and battery packs wherever you want. And so it is tough, you know, but I think starting with our team, you know, everyone on the team is very missional, right? And we're also very aligned in terms of our faith. You know, I'm not judging anyone, but I think the vast majority of our team members are Christ loving Christians. And so there's a bigger purpose to the work that we do. And that does help, you know, I mean, kind of it's reminiscent of the question I like to ask founders, what is your why? Why are you build in this business? In my case, why am I doing venture capital? You know, and it's a purpose. I believe it's what God wants me to do, what God has called me to do. And so that's certainly keeps one going. But I have to say that it's not all fluff. In the last few years, we have seen incredible successes. You know, our portfolio is up 12 X in aggregate today while multiples on investor capital.
Henry Kaestner: I am an investor and I'm grateful through what God has done through our track record, but it a12x that's really impressive.
Kola Aina: We're early stage. We're early stage, right? So we come into this deals really early as a discovery fund and we've been really fortunate with the selection. We've recently started to experience liquidity events for some of our early investments and so there is an encouraging tailwind. But I think in terms of stepping out of venture start for my my team and our track record, I think the ecosystem is genuinely excited about some of the exits that have happened as well as the increase in valuations. Right. And so things like ESOPs are really starting to be meaningful when the company issues your stock. Oh, now, it does mean something. A couple of years ago it meant nothing. And so I think there's a lot to look up to. But yes, the struggle is real for talent. Wages are rising because engineers are sought after all over the world. And so it's the best of times. It's also probably one of the most difficult times as well.
Henry Kaestner: Call it. This has been great. I'm grateful for you to be able to paint a picture of what the entrepreneurial ecosystem looks like in Africa and what investments look like. And one of the things we want to be able to do through this program is to change the narrative. In fact, Ndidi has an entire initiative on changing the narrative for Africa, and I can't think of a better example that's advance that agenda and that objective than this interview. So thank you very much for that. Thank you for talking about your faith and how that's informed what you've done and what you're doing. On that note, as we close out, we like to do this across all of our programs that we do have faith driven. Is there something that you're hearing from God through his word? We believe that God continues to speak to us, and he absolutely does that through prayer and fasting, but very, very much so through his word, through the Bible. And it doesn't necessarily mean it need to be something this morning, though. It could, of course be, but something recently where you feel like, you know, that's something in scripture that really just speaks to me where I am and as God just continuing to point me along his path.
Kola Aina: Yeah. Recently I have been meditating on a scripture from Matthew 11. I think it's Matthew 11 28-30 and it's a beautiful portion of Scripture that describes the unforced rhythm of grace. And for me, in the world we live in today, which, you know, I'm not sure if we're still in the pandemic or we are out of it. We're all zooming from meeting to meeting. Yeah, it's been. The number of emails I receive has quadrupled. But, you know, we also just closed the fund and are doing a final closed. You know, that scripture says, Are you tired? Are you worn out? Are you burnt out of religion? Come to me. You know, at the feet of Christ's there is rest, there is grace. And that whole notion of the unforced freedom of grace, I think, is something that we all need to aspire to learn that world where, you know what? Frustrated about what's happening in Ukraine and I'm frustrated with what's happening with power in Nigeria and and the regulators. God's grace is present. Right. And in that we can find rest, we can find calm. And that, for me is super reassuring, just knowing that in Christ it is rest.
Henry Kaestner: Amen. That's a great encouragement to me. And thank you for sharing that with our audience, and thank you for sharing your time in your life. And may God bless you in the relationships you have with your entrepreneurs and in the community through your foundation. And may you continue to shine that light back in the region where you're from in the north and through the capital city. And I'm just grateful to have spent time with you. And I know that our audience is as well.